Goodson Is a Godsend : After Sitting Out a Season, JC All-American Linebacker From Bay Area Somehow Winds Up Playing for CSUN

Marc Goodson couldn’t get his mind off football.

Especially when he was stuffing his muscular 6-foot-2, 235-pound frame under a sink.

Or when he was finishing a daylong shift remodeling kitchens and bathrooms.

Or when he was cashing his paycheck, which never seemed to be quite as much as Goodson hoped.

Truth be told, his thoughts were rarely on anything but football during a season in which he gave it up to join the work force.

“I wanted to play football ever since I quit football,” said Goodson, who has returned to the game as a junior linebacker for Cal State Northridge.

Which is why his decision to chuck his job and come back to college was a no-brainer.

It was also a no-brainer for Northridge Coach Dave Baldwin to give Goodson a scholarship.

Baldwin, the former coach at Santa Rosa Junior College, remembered Goodson tormenting his team in 1994.

Goodson was playing linebacker for Laney College in Oakland, and was on his way to winning an award as the state junior college defensive player of the year.

“He was the best JC linebacker I faced in the five years I coached at that level,” Baldwin said of Goodson, one of the defensive captains who will lead the Matadors into their season opener Saturday night at Utah State.

Ron Ponciano, Northridge’s defensive coordinator, said, “We were lucky to get him. He just fell in our laps.”

Just how does a player with Goodson’s credentials wind up at a Division I-AA school that went 2-8 last season?

Well, for starters, Goodson is a little smaller than coaches at most major colleges like their linebackers to be. His times in the 40-yard dash don’t raise any eyebrows, either.

“I’ve got football speed, not 40-time speed,” Goodson said.

In two seasons at Laney--which he attended because he failed to make a qualifying score on the Scholastic Assessment Test out of San Leandro High--Goodson made 269 tackles.

“He’s in the top four linebackers that we’ve ever had here,” said Laney Coach Stan Peters, who has been at the school for 31 years. “He’s as good as anybody we’ve had that played inside [linebacker].”

Goodson made 137 tackles and led the Eagles to the No. 2 ranking in the nation in 1994.

He was selected all-state, All-American and Golden Gate Conference most valuable player.

“He was the key to our defense,” Peters said. “We just built everything around him.”

Goodson earned a scholarship with San Jose State, but events in his personal life--which he chooses to keep private--prompted him to quit football.

Weeks before he was to start practice at San Jose State, Goodson called Spartan coaches and told them he would not be showing up.

Instead, he went to work for a company that remodeled kitchens and bathrooms.

“I’ve always loved working with my hands, ever since I was a little kid,” he said. “I always took shop classes and stuff. I really enjoyed it.”

But the job was not all Goodson hoped. As an apprentice, he often worked seven days a week, sometimes 18 hours a day. During one particularly heavy job, he worked a 24-hour shift.

The money was enough to pay his bills, but not, he decided, worth the hassle.

When he had Saturdays off, Goodson would go watch Laney football games. Friends and coaches would greet him, ask how he was doing, then sadly shake their heads when he explained that his football career was over.

They couldn’t believe it. And after a while, neither could he.

“I was missing [football] real bad,” Goodson said. “I thought this job was what I wanted to do, but it wasn’t.”

Northridge entered the picture last December, four months after Goodson was to have started at San Jose State.

Ponciano had been recruiting a couple of Goodson’s friends, who mentioned to the coach that Goodson was also interested in playing for the Matadors.

“I brought up his name to Coach Baldwin and he about flipped,” Ponciano said.

Baldwin remembered a Santa Rosa-Laney game in which Goodson dominated his team. Afterward, coach and opposing player sat on the sidelines and talked football.

Goodson explained to Baldwin how preparation helped him figure out the Santa Rosa offense. He knew what they were doing before they did it. As they talked, Baldwin was impressed by his intensity, which lingered long after the game ended.

Within days of Goodson’s name popping up around the Northridge football office, he was on campus for a visit. Soon after, his name was on a letter of intent.

Only a few weeks after that, Goodson was banging helmets in spring football, catching up on a season missed with a renewed passion for the game.

“I missed it big time,” he said. “I missed just being out there with the guys, the camaraderie of being out with everybody, picking each other up when you are down, making a great hit and slapping somebody on the butt. It just felt good being out there with them all.

“I always loved the game, but until [you are out of it] you don’t realize how much you do.”

During practice, Goodson yells and screams--at himself, teammates, anyone. No one seems to take it personally though.

“He’s one of the main people who have brought a new attitude to the team,” said senior safety James Woods. “He’s real physical and emotional and that rubs off on everyone else. We needed someone like that in his position.”

Goodson was the most impressive defensive player in the final spring football scrimmage and also in a preseason scrimmage.

“He’s a great tackler,” Ponciano said. “He runs well and he’s smart. He can erase a lot of problems up front if we have them.

“Any program would be lucky to have him.”